Egad, Newsletters!

This has been rather a long time in coming, but all the technical jiggery pokery-programmery is finally in place for a WTRG newsletter. It has been polished until iridescent, and will lend an air of exotic sophistication to the inbox of even the most staid of mathematical modelling specialists. If you are a mathematical modelling specialist, I apologise. I love you too.

The idea of putting together a newsletter for the site has been something that has been kicking around in my head for a while now. Like wanting to go and see that really long train in Mauritania, for example, only easier to do without molesting my precious travel savings. What finally tipped me into putting it together was this excellent newsletter from BrookeVsTheWorld, which made me believe that it would be possible to build something that would actually be worth mailing out to you. Not that enlarging your penis or ripping off West African trust funds aren’t worth the occasional email blast, but we are a somewhat classier audience, are we not?

(hand raises)

“So what will be in it?”

An excellent question. I’m intending to use the newsletter format to do three things actually. Firstly, I would really like to use it to put out more photographs. There are a number of interesting/exotic/story-immersed images from past travels that don’t quite warrant a full post’s worth of background, but would be great if put together with a short slice of life from when it was taken.

Then there are journal excerpts from Uganda and Cape to Cairo. Between them, I have something like a hundred and twenty thousand words of rough narrative from days spent in strange places. I’d really like to dig some of it out, make it shine, and dish it out nibble-size every month or so.

Finally, it would be great to put in a couple of retrospective pieces. Pointers to some of the better stuff that I’ve put on this blog in the past. The post on doppelgängers for example. The night train in the Karoo. And other, even older pieces. They are posts that you might just like, and I would love to sit both of you down and make the introductions.